The Meaning of 2022

2019. The Karoo Semi-Desert. Photo by Thomas Scarborough.

by Chengde Chen *

 

When the face mask is off

A Christmas smile appears 

But you know it is a forced one

With much fearfulness underneath 

The plague persists with craziness 

Bones piling up mountain high

Global warming knocks on the door

Proving it has been too late to stop

The conflict between the superpowers 

Increasingly lead to a world war

Which probably let nuclear power

Decide our joys and sorrows

Three kinds of doom come together

As if to make sure there is no escape

But it is this that gives 2022 meaning –

To test human resilience to the full!

* Chengde Chen: author of Five Themes of Today; The Thought-read Revolution, etc. chengde.chen@hotmail.com

Poem: Laughing at the Milky Way

by Chengde Chen *

There was a chicken, who lived his life happily

Every morning, someone opened his coop and fed him

Day by day, month by month

he believed that this was the law of the world

so he never thought of escaping

Until New Year’s Eve

he found a kitchen knife at his neck

The ‘law’ disappeared

and it was too late for regrets!

 

It is laughable for man to worry that the sky might fall

but not laughable for the falling sky to worry about man

The destruction of civilisation cannot be ‘known’

Only mathematics, standing aloof from the world **

can sense the storm from the ancient Milky Way

Those who have felt it should ponder deeply over it

Those who have realised it should issue a cry loudly

Be a madman, letting others laugh

Laughing is better than being oblivious

for those who are laughing are no longer sleeping!

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* Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today, Open Gate Press, London. chengde@sipgroup.com

** See Chengde Chen's The Non-linear Mathematics of History